Having kids is very difficult to do on your own, and it's really crazy difficult to think you're doing it as a team and to find out that you're not actually part of a team.

Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game; endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be.

There are about as many ways to be dead as there are to be alive. People linger in different ways, both publicly and privately.

A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.

I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.

The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

And, in fact, this is the tale that I would love to write: history is such a romantic place, with its jarveys and urchins and side-buttoned boots. If it would just stay still, I think, and settle down. If it would just stop sliding around in my head.